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Political Survey Data Protection

FairSay will not publish personally-identifiable data collected via the politician surveys project, will not sell the data and will keep it secure.

Frequently Asked Questions

1) Will all my responses be unattributable?

I collect information about which politician is responding. In the report, all findings will be unattributed.

The reason it is collected is partly so I know who has responded and thus don't send a reminder if they have, but also so we can compliment the data provided with other factors we don't ask for but are publicly available (e.g. gender, age, if in a marginal seat, year first elected).

2) What will you do with the data collected?

I will be analysing it to produce a report that gives insights into how politicians perceive and respond to campaigning. Commissioning organisations will also get a bit more information about how each politician prefers to be engaged. Once the analysis is publicly released in 2015, the data will be securely retained to be used only for comparing results when future surveys are run (with other politicians in the UK and in other countries where others are also running the survey with their national politicians).

No raw data will be released publicly. Where other trusted organisations in other countries (Germany and Switzerland are the only current cases) run the survey, we may or may not compare results using the raw data (it may not be necessary). But if we do, all personally identifiable information will be stripped out (name, contact details, constituency, etc)

3) How will my data be protected?

As mentioned above, it will not be published, will be stripped of personally identifiable info if used for international analysis, will be stored securely once the survey is over, is held on a server which has all the latest security updates applied (and are updated immediately whenever new updates become available).

4) Who is funding your work?

The work is being funded by 10 medium to large UK charities that include:

1 animal welfare charity

4 health charities

3 development charities

1 union

1 urban livability charity.

The decision not to publicise the specific charities was chosen partly to not bias the survey responses and partly because a few charities only want to be publicly associated with the work they do and not what they commission to help them do that work. If you require a specific list I can ask which ones are willing to be mentioned.

This is a piece of work I initiated and found interested parties (because some had indicated they wanted something like this but it didn't exist), so it isn't driven by a political agenda but by a participation agenda to help charities mobilise citizens and constituents as part of the democratic process.

5) Will it be published?

The report will be publicly released after the May 2015 general election. Before then it will be released only to participating politicians and commissioning organisations. Individual insights may be released before 2015 if the commissioning organisations agree. It will be released in a PDF format similar to how the 2006 survey was released.

Any other questions?

Let me know if that satisfies your concerns and if not, any input would be welcomed. I've received a lot of input from the commissioning charities on how they want it run, but your input as an MP would also be welcomed.